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By Enyeribe Ejiogu and Christy Anyanwu
Not a few people exchanged messages of goodwill on Tuesday, March 1, as they wished one another “Happy New Month” via SMS and on various social media platforms. But at the National Assembly, a wholly different situation was brewing for the Nigerian women.
When the two chambers of the National Assembly convened to vote on the bills amending several provisions of the Constitution, civil society organisations and many other interest groups that had advocated for specific amendments waited with bated breath, anticipating endorsement of the amendments they championed.
By the time the votes were cast, Nigerian women were left in shock as the major bills that pertained to, and were of great interest to them were literally thrown into the legislative trash cans of the two chambers of the 9th National Assembly.
Reacting to the news, a Senior Lecturer at Bells University of Technology, Dr (Mrs) Nkiru Ifekwem, who is also a gender expert and public analyst, characterised what transpired on the floors of the Senate and House of Representative on that fateful March 1 as the annihilation of women in Nigeria, in a year when the theme for the 2022 International Women Day, marked annually on March 8 is, “Time to Break the Bias.”
When asked to comment on the readiness of women to break the bias against them, Dr Ifekwem retorted: “How can we say that women are ready to break the bias when the women that most Nigerian women look up were in Dubai, instead of being at the National Assembly on the day women in Nigeria were being annihilated in the name of constitutional amendment?”
Prior to the final vote on the proposed constitutional amendments, the First Lady, Hajia Aisha Buhari had led a special delegation comprising the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen and other notable women to the floors of the two legislative chambers of the National Assembly to observe their special plenary sessions, in demonstration of her personal support and commitment to seeing the women-centric bills become part of the amendments to the constitution.
Among the issues of major concern to women were: reserving specific seats for women in the National Assembly, giving citizenship to the foreign-born husband of a Nigerian woman, allowing women to become indigenes of their husband’s state of origin after five years of being together, 35 per cent appointed positions for women and women 35 per cent affirmative action in party administration and leadership.
In a very real sense, the visit of the First Lady and earlier efforts ultimately did not sway the legislators as all the issues so dear to the heart of Nigerian women were thrown out by the National Assembly, which incidentally had only a five per cent female membership.
Without doubt, women have always faced gender bias, which Ifekwem explained as “behaviour that shows favouritism towards one gender over another,” noting that it is a common stance in this part of the world.
“It is common knowledge or rather it is obvious that men and boys are favoured over women and girls.
“You see, having a baby boy seems a greater achievement than a baby girl even when it is a fact that girls take care of their aged parents more than boys. We normally hear that someone had a bouncing baby boy as if a baby girl doesn’t bounce. Remember the advert, ‘Mama, na boy’, which a GSM telecommunication company once ran several years ago. Female activists fought to stop further broadcast of the television commercial as it was considered discriminatory to the baby girl. In spite of the little improvement we have in the gender space, there is still bias, stereotyping and discrimination against women.
“I can assure you that women in Nigeria have not shown enough readiness to break the bias. Women are still caught up with so many frivolities instead of the main issues that affect them. Talk of intra-gender animosity, women in different spheres of life still fight with each other instead of supporting each other for growth; there is much pettiness and unnecessary envy.”
In Ifekwem’s view, the National Assembly clearly indicated that women in Nigeria are irrelevant.
“We are looking out to see if the women agree that they are. Going through history, I feel for the women that laid their lives for us during the Aba Women Riot over 90 years ago. With all our education now, the technology, the awareness and globalisation, Nigeria is still the way it is today and we women are not ready to sacrifice the way our less educated sisters did 90 years ago. The likes of Margaret Ekpo and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti are definitely disappointed with us in their grave. They can never believe that there are only seven female senators out of 109 members and 12 female House of Representatives members out of 360 members in the 9th assembly and Nigeria has never had a female governor except the opportune and accidental case of Mrs Virgy Etiaba, who became governor after Peter Obi got impeached in Anambra State,” she said with an obvious sad tone.
The pain of Ifekwem is shared by Prof Remi Sonaiya, a politician, educationist and writer. She was the only female presidential candidate in 2015 general election on the platform of KOWA Party.
Contextualising the bias which she strongly believes was shown to women by NASS, Sonaiya said: “I was actually thinking that we have been talking about bad treatment meted out to Nigerian citizens in Ukraine, the racism against them in that they were not allowed to board buses in the wake of the Russian invasion to get to the border of Poland. When such things happened members of the National Assembly were angry, saying they could not tolerate that kind of treatment. But what they did against the women is it not the same thing? Is it not the same act of discrimination; is it not the same refusal to recognize the humanness? They are practicing the same thing: gender discrimination and gender bias.”
Dealing with bias
Vice Chairperson, Commonwealth Businesses Women Network and Chief Executive/Boardchair, Strategic Women and Youth Institute (SWYI), Mrs Ngozi Oyewole, is one resourceful female person that has mastered the art of confronting and overcoming barriers placed in her way.
She said: “As an entrepreneur I am always happy to tell my story and the barriers I face every time, and how I overcome them. Like they say your story is your strength and be shameless about the hustle.
“Office furniture manufacturing is thought to be a male-dominated industry, but I thrive very well and pounding the ground even harder than the men. What I face is a Catch-22 situation sometimes, where some are biased and display stereotyped behaviour and the implicit association with the entrepreneur’s business competency, especially when they say ‘don’t pitch like a girl’ – this driven by stereotypes based on gender role expectations for men and women. In my case, a woman entrepreneur playing in a male dominated area such as mine, is considered overly assertive, viewed negatively, and will experience career backlash.
“So, women entrepreneurs who disrupt gender norms by adopting masculine-stereotyped behaviour are likely to lose approval and be negatively perceived by others. This then creates roadblocks for them. This is very common when seeking growth capital, where the women suffer from investor perceptions as a female entrepreneur instead of looking into their preferences for the venture.
“So, women experience a greater difficulty in obtaining funding for their businesses because the investors perceive women-led businesses as less legitimate, riskier and competency deficient. Because of these discriminatory practices women entrepreneurs face, a lot of women are discouraged and cannot even take off from ground zero.
“In the early stages of my entrepreneurial journey where I had to pitch for funds for my business, I was poorly served because I was perceived as inferior to men in terms of having the necessary abilities to lead a business, because I was expected to display communal traits to fulfill my female gender role as a nurturer, which is in contrast to the leadership role’s requirement for energetic traits.
“I sat back and looked inwards, got myself well equipped to face the battle and realized that gender bias cannot be killed by fire, but by knowledge! I embarked on self-development, got myself a coach, grew my confidence, expanded my knowledge, through networking by joining social organizations, increased my net-worth and today here I am.”
On the way forward, to achieve the desire of women in the Nigerian polity, Sonaiya counselled that the womenfolk need the cooperation of the men, to attain the increase in the number of women participating in politics.
“We won’t give up,” she said with dogged confidence of a fighter.
